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All Rise...

Judge Paul Corupe thinks it's great that NoShame puts such detail into their releases, but does the DVD have to smell like someone slaughtered a cow?

The Charge

The Sweet Perversion of Ercoli in the Yellow House of the Killer Three-Disc
Set

Opening Statement

Of all the previously untapped genres that have exploded onto DVD, none have
made quite as big an impact as the giallo—those stylishly shot
Italian thrillers with the hilarious, often completely nonsensical titles. A
decade ago, few could even pronounce the term, but today, a steady stream of
these sexy slashers has pushed the genre to the forefront of Euro-cult fandom.
NoShame Films, a DVD outfit devoted to releasing the hidden gems of Italian
cinema, wowed collectors last year with superlative releases of two top-notch
gialli by Sergio Martino, The
Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh and The
Case of the Scorpion's Tail, and they've done it again withThe Luciano
Ercoli Death Box Set, a highly enjoyable box set which offers Death Walks
on High Heels and Death Walks at Midnight, a pair of stunning
spaghetti mysteries made in the space of two years with almost the exact same
casts.

Facts of the Case

In Death Walks on High Heels, French nightclub dancer Nicole Rochard
(Susan Scott, All the Colors of the Dark) is terrorized by a darkly-clad
man with brilliant blue eyes who demands that she reveal the whereabouts of a
hidden a stash of diamonds belonging to her jewel thief father. Convinced that
the mysterious man is her boyfriend, Michael (Simon Andreu, Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason), Nicole
flees Paris for a seaside love nest with an English suitor, Dr. Robert Matthews
(Frank Wolff, The Great Silence), but still cannot seem to escape her
pursuer.

Death Walks at Midnight brings back Scott as fashion model Valentina,
who experiments with a new hallucinogenic drug to help newspaper writer Gio
(Andreu) with a story. Immediately, Valentina is overcome by a vision of a
generously coiffed killer in dark glasses plunging a spiked metal glove into the
face of a woman in the vacant apartment across the street. After coming to her
senses, she demands to know if whole thing was simply imagined, or if the drug
somehow set a repressed memory free. When Gio publishes his story, Valentina
finds out that the murder did occur, and she must solve the killer's identity
herself—if she doesn't wind up perforated first.

The Evidence

Though producer-turned-director Luciano Ercoli only directed a fistful of
gialli—the two presented here, plus 1970's Forbidden Photos of a
Lady Above Suspicion (due out soon from Blue Underground)—it's
undeniable that he brought his own special twist to the Italian thriller. Unlike
some of the more sadistic and sleazy gialli, which seem to exist only to
fetishize the act of murder itself with a complete disregard for story or logic,
Death Walks on High Heels, and Death Walks at Midnight are
well-plotted films that make excellent use of intense imagery and a hypnotic use
of flashbacks and visions.

Death Walks on High Heels is the real jewel here, a constantly
winding path of murder, mayhem, and masquerade that notably departs from the
giallo formula with a fascinating, Hitchcock-inspired plot twist half way
through. Though somewhat convoluted, the carefully revealed back-story does make
sense, and the film teases the viewer with the virtually indecipherable mystery
until the very last frame. Every shot, especially those with Scott, is just
beautifully captured by cinematographer Fernando Arribas, who uses dynamic
compositions to emphasize the script's emphasis on eyes and seeing, an allegory
that recalls The Bird with the Crystal
Plumage—especially when Dr. Matthews is shot and almost killed in
front of a patient, a blind man who only recalls the high-heeled footfalls of
the suspect. Death Walks on High Heels eschews much of the nudity and
violence that has become synonymous with the giallo, but it works
incredibly well as a mind-twisting whodunit; it's easily among the finest, most
well-crafted examples of the genre I've yet to see.

Death Walks at Midnight, based on a script by spaghetti western
master Sergio Corbucci (Django), isn't
quite as notable, but it's still an entertaining flick in its own right. A much
more conventional giallo that again borrows from the Dario Argento school
of thrillers, the plot makes a little bit less sense, but cranks up the visceral
thrills to compensate. The creepy killer is the real attraction of this
film—sporting wild hair and dark Elvis glasses, he brutally kills several
girls with his sinister barbed gauntlet in Valentina's psychedelic-tinged
memories, and keeps popping up in unlikely places through the narrative, scaring
the model half to death until she can unravel the whole sordid story. Scott,
also director Ercoli's wife, gets a much juicer role this time out, an
incredibly strong heroine who's as sexy as she is smart, not content to just
play the victim as she might in less accomplished films. Still, at more than 100
minutes, Death Walks at Midnight gets bogged down in the middle and
probably doesn't have enough bloody killings to satisfy modern horror fans as
Scott endlessly shuttles back and forth across Naples on wild chases with a
variety of disbelieving friends and acquaintances. Still, Arribas' camerawork is
as sharp as ever, and the film is simply a joy to look at.

NoShame Film's impressive The Luciano Ercoli Death Box Set also
benefits from an excellent presentation—both films are offered in gorgeous
2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen transfers, with bright, bold colors and not a speck
of dust, debris or digital meddling to be seen. Purists will also be happy to
discover that the films can be watched either in Italian with English subtitles,
or in English with the included dub track (though switching on the fly has been
disabled). As for extras, Death Walks on High Heels gets a pair of
trailers and an image gallery, while Death Walks at Midnight gets a
second gallery and can also be viewed in its English TV version, which adds a
few inconsequential dialogue scenes, but suffers from some print damage. The
major bonus feature is the set's third disc, a CD collecting the brilliant
soundtrack work of Stelvio Cipriani, Ercoli's composer of choice. NoShame had
previously offered a CD of Euro soundtrack cues with their DVD of The Last Round, but they were modern day
covers; this is the real deal, and it's an excellent addition. Though none of
the selections on this 18 track album are from these two films, aficionados of
the Easy Tempo series and composers like Piero Umiliani and Piero
Piccioni will flip for this platter of grooved-out organ and psychedelic
instrumental funk.

Closing Statement

Packaging both Death Walks on High Heels and Death Walks at
Midnight together on the same release was a great idea by NoShame, but the
inclusion of the Cipriani CD as an extra truly makes this an essential
giallo release.